Sometimes, it can be more difficult than expected to instill a passion for food and its preparation into your family, especially if they each have an incredibly busy schedule. As such, if you are adamant that your entire family, from the youngest child to their stressed parents, will enjoy cooking food, here are a few top tips to pique their interest.
Make it Fun
The first step that you should take if you want to get your whole family to love food is to ensure that cooking and baking are fun within your household. You should make sure that the time that you spend cooking together is full of laughter and light-heartedness, even if your normally tidy kitchen suffers for it, and you should even allow children to play a little with the food if that is what will get them interested. You should also consider allowing the children and the adults in your family to decorate the food that they produce. For instance, you might decide to allow them to draw their own pictures on cookies or use Halloween coffee stencils to create spooky designs in their drinks. This will then ensure that they never associate cooking with boredom or see it simply as a necessity.
Get Hands-On
You should also make sure that every member of your family engages with cooking by allowing them to be hands-on and follow the recipe for themselves. Instead of doing everything for the children in your family for fear of them making a mess, you should instead encourage them to get involved themselves and you should only oversee the process instead. Although you should think carefully about their safety when carrying out certain tasks, such as using sharp objects like knives, allowing them to be hands-on can mean that they start to grow their skills from a young age.
Cook Something for Everyone
Many people are disinterested in cooking because they are dispassionate about the food that they are creating. As such, rather than finding recipes that you think are useful or that they will like, you should instead ask everyone what their favorite foods are and what ingredients they do not like. Once you have done this, you can then try to find a recipe that everyone will adore, as this will ensure that every single person thinks that their cooking endeavors were worth it.
Get Them Into the Habit
You can also ensure that your entire family grows up loving food by getting them into the habit of cooking from a young age. They will then see cooking as a comforting activity that they find relatively easy to do, and they are more likely to find more time to cook when they are older. However, cooking should never become old news, and you should also try to use cooking as a treat for your family, letting them bake cakes, cookies, and other goodies when you want to praise them and make them feel good about themselves. You should also try to give your family the time to cook and prioritize this over other activities.